A skier died Friday in an avalanche outside controlled-area boundaries of Revelstoke Mountain Resort in British Columbia, a spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told CNN.

Two other skiers, who were buried in the avalanche, were rescued by members of their party, said Cpl. Dan Moskaluk.

The incident, which was witnessed by resort staff members, occurred between 1 p.m (4 p.m. ET) and 1:30 p.m. (4:30 p.m. ET), Moskaluk said in a telephone interview. A search-and-rescue team was planning to search Saturday for the body.

In a preview of a major constitutional showdown at the Supreme Court over same-sex marriage, the Obama administration said Friday that a federal law denying financial benefits to legally wed gay and lesbian couples is unconstitutional.

The Justice Department filed the first of a series of briefs in a pair of cases dealing with the multi-layered issue, outlining the executive branch's positions.

The high court will hear oral arguments next month on the Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 congressional law that says, for federal purposes, marriage is defined only as between one man and one woman.

Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn has invited gunmakers such as Colt to relocate to his state from Connecticut, where firearms have been a controversial issue since last December's elementary school shooting left 20 students and six adults dead there.

The gun industry in Connecticut is being attacked and "demonized" because of national politics, Gunn said in a letter this week to Colt's Manufacturing Company CEO Dennis Veilleux.

He also invited gunmaker Magpul Industries Corp. of Colorado to relocate to Mississippi.

Gunn, a Republican, said firearm manufacturers are "under attack in anti-Second Amendment states."

Microsoft was hacked much like Facebook and Apple, the technology company announced today on its security blog.

Microsoft said that its investigators "found a small number of computers, including some in our Mac business unit ... were infected by malicious software using techniques similar to those documented by other organizations."

Apple said Tuesday that some of its employees' computers were compromised, and Facebook revealed a similar breach weeks earlier.

Pinterest said Friday in an e-mail to its users that the pinboard-style photosharing social network site was breached via its vendor Zendesk.

"We recently learned that the vendor we use to answer support requests and other emails (Zendesk) experienced a security breach," said the content-sharing service. Users "pin" images and videos to their pinboards.

"We're sending you this e-mail because we received or answered a message from you using Zendesk. Unfortunately your name, email address and subject line of your message were improperly accessed during their security breach."

The Syrian National Coalition, the country's principal opposition group, says it is suspending its participation in the upcoming Friends of Syria conference in Rome "in protest of the shameful international position."

After a missile shelling that killed dozens in Aleppo on Friday, the group said on its Facebook page that it "considers the international silence toward the crimes committed every day against our people is, in effect, participation in the ongoing slaughter for the last two years."

The television broadcaster Globovision, long critical of the Venezuelan government, has been excluded from government plans to switch broadcast formats from analog to digital, Reporters Without Borders said Friday.

Globovision, which is Venezuela's sole national television broadcaster that routinely criticizes the government, "has been excluded from a new system of Open Digital Television (TDA), which the government launched on February 20 in a televised announcement that all the broadcast media had to carry," the advocacy group reported.

"Under the TDA system, all TV stations currently broadcasting by means of an analogue signal will eventually have to switch to a digitally processed signal in order to continue operating," it said.

The investigation into Tuesday's explosion that killed one person at a restaurant in Kansas City, Missouri, has been completed and a full report will be issued next week, a Kansas City fire spokesman said Friday.

The U.S. Department of Justice has joined a whistle-blower lawsuit against cyclist Lance Armstrong that was originally filed by a former teammate, an attorney for Armstrong said Friday.

Former Armstrong teammate Floyd Landis, who was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title after failing a drug test, filed a suit in 2010 against their former team, which was sponsored the U.S. Postal Service.

The lawsuit accused the team's former management of defrauding the government of millions of dollars because the team management knew about team members' drug use and didn't do anything.

We're just days away from automatic federal spending cuts, and another government official is warning what the effects will be if lawmakers don't come up with a way to avoid them.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said minutes ago that the cuts will, if they take effect, heavily impact the Federal Aviation Administration and likely trigger flight delays nationwide and air traffic control tower closures at some small airports as soon as April.

Mandatory, government-wide budget cuts are due to begin on March 1 absent congressional action on deficit-reduction to avert them. The cuts are mandated by a 2011 agreement to raise the federal debt ceiling.

[Updated 10:40 a.m. ET] So, that's about it from the Pretoria courtroom. To sum up: A magistrate granted bail to Pistorius after giving a roughly 90-minute speech in which he covered the history and law of South African bail, summarized the case, criticized the police investigation and expressed skepticism about Pistorius' account.

Chief Magistrate Desmond Nair said the former chief investigator in the case, Hilton Botha, had made "several errors and concessions" during his testimony this week, and said prosecutors had failed to prove that Pistorius was a flight risk or had a propensity toward violence.

Pistorius will be free pending trial, as long as he meets the conditions listed below.

[Updated 10:35 a.m. ET] Pistorius' uncle, Arnold Pistorius, has told reporters the following on the behalf of the Pistorius family:

"We are in mourning over the death of Reeva, with her family. We also grateful for the ... magistrate to come to the conclusion, and for our legal team that has delivered extremely professional and legal (services) that led to the decision to give him bail today.

"As a family we know that Oscarâ€™s version of what happened at that tragic night, and we know that that is the truth, and that will prevail in the coming court cases."

His owner, Karen Blue, shot a video of the 75-pound pooch barreling down a slope near Kansas City, Missouri, on a bright red sled, barking all the way. He appeared to enjoy himself, and Blue got a warm chuckle out of it.

A shooting and a fiery crash left three people dead in the neon heart of the Las Vegas Strip on Thursday, and police scrambled to find out who triggered the carnage.

The bloodshed closed the Strip for about a block and a half around some of its biggest draws, leaving tourists gaping at a wrecked Maserati, a burned-out taxi and four other vehicles.

"First time in Vegas, and then, like, the whole thing, what you know from movies only - I was shocked," Christine Gerstenberger, who was visiting the desert gambling mecca from Germany, said Thursday afternoon. She and her brothers debated going back to the hotel "because I'm totally scared," but "We're too curious," she said.

One of those killed was Kenneth Cherry Jr. - a rapper also known as Kenny Clutch - his attorney Vicki Greco said. According to his Facebook page, Cherry is from Oakland, California, and lived in Las Vegas.

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